How ColdFusion processes pages

The following steps explain how the ColdFusion server processes a ColdFusion page:

The ColdFusion server looks at the content of the page and searches for the following ColdFusion instructions:
- Tag names that begin with cf.
- Variables and functions that are always surrounded by number signs (#).
If the ColdFusion server finds any HTML or plain text in the page, the ColdFusion server returns it to the web server unchanged.
The ColdFusion server processes all the ColdFusion instructions found, and returns any remaining results to the web server. The web server then sends the entire output to the browser.